An internal Auschwitz
document which ordered that building plans for the
crematoria at the camp were to be kept secret showed that
they had been "committed to genocidal use", the High Court
heard today.

The existence of the "house order", dated May 5, 1943,
emerged during historian David Irving's
cross-examination of Auschwitz expert Professor Robert
van Pelt, who is giving evidence for the defence in Mr
Irving's libel action over claims that he is a "Holocaust
denier".

Prof van Pelt told Mr Justice Gray that the first
trial gassing in Crematorium Two -- where ultimately 500,000
people were to die -- took place in March 1943, with nearly
all the crematoria in operation by May.

During 1944, he added, there were seven gas chambers in
use at the camp.

Mr Irving, who accepts there were gassings on a limited
basis but denies the existence of "factories of death", said
that the order covered blue-prints for the crematoria.

It read: "It must be pointed out that we are concerned
here with works that are connected with the war economy and
are to be kept secret. In particular, plans for the
crematoria are to be kept under the strictest
surveillance..."

It said that in connection with
the building works, a responsible construction leader had
to give instructions to the prisoner inmates on the spot
and that the original plans were to be kept "under lock
and key".

Mr Irving asked if the professor could see "no harmless
reason" for such a regulation.

Prof van Pelt said: "I can't see what the problem would
be so it's remarkable that the crematoria seem to be
designated here with a particular type of internal security
clarification."

He added: "The Germans certainly had reason to be ashamed
of the homicidal use of the buildings ... the date is May 5,
1943 - revealing that by this time all these buildings had
been committed to genocidal use."

He speculated that once this happened, someone must have
decided that any leak of the information to the outside
world must be prevented.

He said it was known from eye-witness testimony that a
Czech female member of the camp resistance did steal some
plans in 1944 and smuggle them out.

Prof van Pelt agreed that none of the blue-prints showed
any modification to create holes in the roof necessary for
the introduction of cyanide into the chambers.

Mr Irving, who says that the apparent lack of such holes
means that genocidal gassing did not occur, said that he
would abandon his action tomorrow if the Auschwitz
authorities would agree to clear the rubble from the ruined
crematoria and find the holes.

Such a move, he said, would thwart neo-Nazis who
currently benefited from the existence of doubts over the
gas chambers.

Prof van Pelt said that the condition of the site was
such that it was unlikely that one would find an intact slab
to inspect.

Mr Irving, the 62-year-old author of Hitler's War, is
seeking damages over American academic Deborah
Lipstadt's 1994 book, Denying The
Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And
Memory.

Accused by the defendants of being "a liar and a
falsifier of history", he depends on a 1988 report by a man
called Fred Leuchter, who has taken samples from
ruins at Auschwitz and concluded that there were never
homicidal gas chambers there.

Mr Irving says Prof. Lipstadt's book has generated "waves
of hatred" against him.

The hearing was adjourned until Monday.

See
how this journalist has bent the truth. See the Radical's
Diary version of what really happened:

January 28, 2000

January
28, 2000 (Friday)

London

Worked until 4 a.m.
completing eight sets of photos for the court, today's
hearing. Bed at 4:10 a.m., up at 7:50 a.m., to take Jessica
to school. With Kevin Macdonald to High Court at 9:15
a.m.; court rose at 10 a.m., and sat until 3:30 a.m.
Straight away Rampton rose and tried to get MacDonald's
evidence thrown out, as it had, he said, no bearing on the
case. I said that I would be putting to the professor three
or four documents on Monday which would show precisely what
the link was. I then I put to the judge my submissions about
the enhanced burden of proof based on the Rhesa case
(Cross) and I believe he began to appreciate that, although
Rampton argued that the proof required for the Auschwitz
issue was the old level, not the enhanced level required in
aggravated libels.

[Professor
Robert] Van Pelt then showed the court an
interesting computer-generated "walk through" of Krema II
and Krema IV; once or twice I stopped him and made
interjections, it was after all technically my
cross-examination of him that he was using for this slide
show. When he showed the Krema II from outside the far end
of the (below ground) Leichenkeller, with the new staircase
right in front of us, it looked so obviously like any
grassy-mound-covered air raid shelter I had seen that I
asked him what kind of door was to be found at the foot of
those stairs into the Leichenkeller 1; he said, none was
found. I said, "It could have been a standard LS-Keller door
with peephole then, couldn't it?" and left that idea
festering in the judge's mind. He paid close attention to
the way a double door had been moved from opening into the
Leichenkeller 1 to opening out of it on a drawing
(Deckblatt) by [Walter] Dejaco himself in Dec
1942. I asked the judge's permission to make a close
inspection, and pointed out that the new drawing showed the
doorway with a rebated edge to the door jambs (frame),
indicating that the new doors would fit into the snugly as
if to withstand (air blast) pressure. He confirmed again
today that the only evidence for the homicidal use of the
Leichenkeller as what I insisted on calling a "factory of
death" is eye-witness, i.e. anecdotal evidence. Mysteriously
he did not mention [Rudolf] Hoess as a
source, or [Kurt] Aumeier.

On the [Krema II]
chimney stack, I asked him when cross examination resumed
what the length of the flame path from the furnace through
the tunnels to the tip of the chimney would be, and we
reached a length of over 100 feet. At the right moment I
then pointed out that flames of that length were impossible,
so the 1945/46 Olere drawing showing flames and smoke
belching from the chimney was quite fictitious. I said that
the efficient German design also had the usual smoke traps
installed. I now put to him the original 3 foot square
prints [by the US National Archives Cartographic
Branch] of the original negatives of the aerial photos,
and asked him to confirm that they were all taken in 1944.
Then I asked him to find "holes" or "smudges" on any of the
Kremas visible on those prints whatsoever.

We
reverted to the "holes" again, to ensure the judge got
the point. I said, "If the Polish authorities will now
scrape the topsoil and gravel off that slab and find the
holes, I am ready and willing to drop this case the very
same day!"

At this there were
nervous sniggers from the (I am told) largely Jewish public
galleries. I saw a rather grey, gaunt, and withered Sir
Martin Gilbert amongst them, and Dr Thomas
Stuttaford the famous Times
doctor was also present.

I asked Pelt his general
view on eye witnesses, and would he believe in them so
firmly if his name was Ivan Demjanjuk, who was nearly
hanged on the evidence of twelve such men, and rescued only
by the brave Israeli judges who threw out the evidence and
conviction.

Just before lunch,
Rampton succeeded (I forget how) in putting to him the May
5, 1943 document, the Hausverordnung, specifying enhanced
security for drawings of crematoria, "because of the
wehrwirtschaftlich importance of the Arbeiten"
going on there. I protested of course at this kind of
procedure, and Pelt (foolishly for him) admitted he had long
been aware of the document but (as I pointed out at once)
had discarded it as of no probative value.

Unfortunately for
Rampton, only half an hour earlier, Pelt had dwelt at length
on the Goldarb[eit] room in Krema II and
Krema III, and I had (anticipating precisely this) willingly
conceded that the "Ofen" in one corner of the
Goldarb. Room stood for Schmelzofen. This was a
delicious defeat for Rampton. It went in stages: I asked
Pelt, "Could it be said that the genocide of the Jews and
others in any way contributed to the German war economy
[Wehrwirtschaft]?" Pelt, puzzled: "No."

Then, I pointed out, this
enhanced security measure was not designed to conceal the
genocide from prying eyes, was it -- it was some
Arbeit specifically contributing to the economy, and
that could only be the reference to Goldarb. The judge
clearly accepted this point, and Rampton almost tore up his
prize exhibit in rage.

After lunch I asked about
the Soviet mission 1945 report on Auschwitz, Nuremberg
exhibit USSR-008, and got Pelt to confirm that two of its
authors were also signatories of the notorious Katyn
investigation, and that [Trofim] Lysenko the
crazy biologist was another. This clearly rattled him, and
impressed the judge.

I asked Pelt how often he
had been to Auschwitz,
"Once or twice" in his life? He said, "No, virtually every
year for many years." I inquired why temptation had not got
the better of him, to take a trowel, knowing where those
holes should be, and to scrape away the gravel and find at
least one "prefabricated hole" to confound us
"revisionists." He said that would be improper -- to
interfere with such a holy site. I said, referring to
[Fred] Leuchter, "Well one of us did that
kind of thing, didn't he!"

Asking what an air fare
to Warsaw or Krakow would cost, I again said I would drop
the whole action if he found even one hole, and the judge
said I had made my point, in his view (i.e. proceed). That
concluded my cross examination.

Just at the end of his
re-examination, Rampton threw in the second new
surprise-document (the Zamosc one I referred to in the
message to my Inner Circle yesterday). Rampton revealed that
they had received it only yesterday "from an anonymous
source". At this I rose and firmly protested: this document,
I said, had been received by me from them at 1 p.m.
yesterday (and marked as such); it was clearly wrong for
Rampton to introduce fresh documents like this in a
re-examination, to which I could not answer, and the proper
place is many weeks hence, after I have had time to examine
it from every angle particularly as to its integrity. Mr
Justice Gray allowed that objection at once, and the
document was put away; Gray confirmed that he had not, and
would not, read it. -- On that note Pelt was released from
the witness stand.

Back to Duke Street...
Almost at once Mr Sharon Sadeh and Tom Segev,
both of Ha'aretz,
arrived to interview me; considerably more fun that Eric
Silver yesterday, though their final reports will
undoubtedly express the same line. Pre-empting their
inevitable accusations, I said [like Dr Samuel
Johnson of John Wilkes]: "The charge of
anti-Semitism is the last resort of the Jewish scoundrel."--
I then slept for two hours on the sofa.